PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh Are Mac users valued here?

Having taken some 60,000 lines of code and ported it from system to system I can attest to the fact it's no mean feat.

You cannot compare apples to oranges here, for you don't know what computer language Band in a Box was written in, nor do you know the history of compilers made available when the o/s changed.

Certainly if you wrote software BEFORE the days of windows, in a 'mathematical' language, which is what music really is, you might have a struggle to find a compiler. That was, and remains the case, lack of a compiler. Given the tiny market share, and the mentality that all things Mac are free, any software developer has to assign resources where they generate revenue, not to please a few people who might buy the software.

Anyone with a head on their shoulders would understand that if there were no huge issues, and if the process was easy, you'd just take you code and load it and hit the button and end up with a finished product. It just does not work that way.

I took 200,000 lines of Cobol from an IBM mainframe at Bell 25 years ago and replaced it with 500 lines of code and a database manager. From punch cards to data entry by exception. From Mainframe to Unix. It was open to every Bell based business in North America, and I got $200 per install from Newfoundland to Texas. They tried, whined, cried, and did everything but threaten me in some jurisdictions when I refused to assist in writing it for Dos. They paid for Unix, it had shell scripts and AWK commands and filters and pipes. Still can't do that in 'Dos/Windows'. Nor can you call up the network at 2 a.m. and run software on distributed machines, collect the results, filter them, batch print them, and mail the results to 200 managers. Easily done in Unix.

I just don't get the point of assuming that Pgmusic is at fault for not providing the same programs on Mac.

Remember my video editing experience. There was no company locally with 30 employees who sold and trained AVID on Macs. But there was one using HP computers and a turnkey AVID solution with Sony camera support for DV. And I've been retired for 9 years now, and that project started 5 years before I retired. I lead it. I think we were leery of the fact that Mac's were promising the ability to write DVD's but in our decision flow chart that was the #1 requirement, to make training DVD's for 12 to 14 fire stations and eliminate the need to take them out of service and move to our training facility. I got the tour of all the leading video production facilities in our area, and the top Mac dealer showed me 2 places doing wedding videos on Macs.

I have no idea of the current state of affairs. I have one PC/Win 7 system, and now 3 Ubuntu based machines networked. Is the Win7 machine for pinnicle, which is close enough to Avid I didn't need to learn much, and to run Band in a Box. All other tasks have been on Ubuntu, including all internet stuff except to download updates to Band in a Box and transfer video between systems.

Awesome! A flame war in the mac forum! We're got like 3 dudes arguing! hahaha. Anyways, I was playing around with the PC version of BIAB... and I say, MEH.
On the mac side, I would quit my moaning if I could just know what chorus I'm on! Geeze! Don't talk to me about switching to notation view. That view SUCKS.
Seriously, how much programming would that take? Add the stupid number to the chord view! YARG!

While I liked Macs, I switched to Windows systems about 15 years ago because "not available for Mac" was happening too often - and PCs were generally much cheaper.

Tough to be a continual BIAB stepchild. :-)

Actually, I think there are interesting possibilities here.

The Mac version requires OSX which is a Posix compliant OS and since v10.5 is in fact a certified unix OS when running on intel. This suggests that a port of the Mac version of BIAB to linux may not be an unreasonable hope.

I imagine the biggest hurdle may be the gui API's - is the OSX gui X Windows?

My humble opinion is that less is better, often
I've been using the program since version 10 for windows, than switched to mac 6 years ago. Last year was the most important, because i used Binab with real tracks for live performances, in addition to the usual work of making backing tracks.
Can't say now how many gigs i did with it, not few though, well i can say i had very very very few problems with it. I mean i don't regret the hundreds of functions i don't have in the mac version, as long as i got a light, reliable program. Besides i am convinced that what mac version really needs from win version for being "perfect" is 4 maybe 5 things, not more. Perhaps in 2011...